Is Our Focus on Knowledge Making Us Dumb?

Capturing customer voice and successful knowledge management are critical for business success. At Mentor Graphics we focus heavily on both areas yet the question remains: "Could we do more?" Is there something we could do to improve efficiency while maintaining our current level of customer satisfaction; or are we missing something which would further improve customer satisfaction? In writing this paper I have outlined our current systems and processes at a high enough level to capture a basic understanding of what we are doing and what we might consider improving upon. Myinformation is based on my personal experience and the perceptions of 19 other Mentor Graphics employees representing various functional roles and several different products and product divisions. I found that the processes in each division vary drastically but the perceptions of effectiveness align very closely. This presentation is a subset of the paper. I will outline our current systems and how we are generating knowledge for customer consumption. I will also discuss areas where we are currently failing to capture knowledge and how we are working to improve those situations.